April 22, 2012 - 3:22am
Inside an Italian bakery
Here's a great video I found on youtube recorded in some Italian bakery. The baker is obviously an older baker and I just love the laid-back fashion in which he shapes and scores his bread. It shows that he's probably been a baker all his life. Note the very old scale his uses to weigh the dough.
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The mark of the true expert, the baker makes it look so effortless and casual. Maybe my problem with slashing has been that I am too hesitant. I will think of this video next time I pick up my lame`. Enjoyed watching the way he picked up that wet dough and shaped it. Yesterday when I was making onion rolls I had to add or subtract bits and pieces to probably six of the twelve rolls as I weighed. I wondered then if I would ever be able to judge weight without the bits and pieces added. So watching this man adjusting for weight makes me both more confident and more aware of how good it is to scale. Thanks for posting the video, enjoyed watching it.
This is a good video. I love that big glob of wet dough. My Italian is not great, but I found a reference that says the baker (and owner?) Dino Clemente was born in Altamura. They have a few others here: http://www.youtube.com/user/clementebakery
Thanks, Juergen. First time I've seen a bench knife used for scoring. Pretty interesting and was fun to watch!
Thanks for posting this. I echo the other baker's sentiments in the video being really informative on aggressive scoring, and found the bench knife scoring particularly interesting. I had never seen big wooden racks like that either. Thank you.
He didn't look older to me one bit - just rustic in an artisan bread sort of way :-) What a nice video. I learned some more about slashing and new techniques. I hadseen Nancy Silverman slashing her olive bread and then pulling gently at the cut edges to improve the final bloom and ears on Julia Child Masters but this master took it to new heights by slashing with a bench scraper, then slashing again with a blade and then pulling on the ears to no end. He certainly showed no fear that can only come with great experience.